This invention generally relates to the scrambling and descrambling of digital data on storage media such as optical disks. Several aspects of the invention relate to scrambling ternary and multi-valued data by way of Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) and non-LFSR scramblers and the creation of scrambling sequences and descrambling of the scrambled data by way of multi-valued LFSR and non LFSR descramblers and descrambling sequences.
Non-volatile storage of digital data currently takes predominantly place in binary form in physical media, such as magnetic, optical and magneto-optical media. These media are often manufactured and used in rotating disks and tapes. The advantage of these media is the ability to store large amounts of data on very small surfaces, and to write data in a relatively short time frame and provide rapid reading access to the data.
Optical disks are especially popular, because of their data capacity, combined with their relatively inexpensive manufacturing cost, and the flexibility of transportability and distribution.
The physical principles of writing data to a disk are different for different media. For magnetic disks, the writing of binary data involves the changing of local magnetic properties of the material. In optical media it involves the changing of optical properties, such as reflection of light, of the material.
Writing and reading of data on and off the disk, respectively, may take place while the disk rotates at a relatively high speed. Several physical effects can influence the accuracy of the data storage and data retrieval.
The quality of data storage and retrieval can be expressed at the reading stage as Bit-error ratio or BER. The BER can be determined by storing a known binary sequence on a data storage disk and retrieving it. After retrieval, the retrieved data can be compared with the original sequence. The ratio of incorrectly recovered bits to the total number of bits in the sequence is an indication for the overall error performance of a disk and is called the bit-error-ratio. There are several phenomena that can influence the BER. The correct detection of the written symbols can be influenced by noise. The correct and optimal moment of symbol detection also may influence the bit-error-ratio. A clock signal may be needed to optimize correct detection moments. Inter-symbol-interference can also influence the error ratio.
Rotating storage media, such as optical disks, may contain operational data used for the correct operation of the medium as a storage device. These data can either be invariant or may be predictive in nature, so that the system can anticipate their presence. These data can be separate and different from user-data. It is important for the system to distinguish between ‘maintenance/control’ data and user-data, or be able to use the ‘maintenance/control’ aspects of user-data. The storage system should not change the information content of user-data. The system may change the user-data's statistical properties, without changing its information content, so it acquires useful system operational properties from the user data.
Data symbols representing user-data are written on and read from tracks on a disk. These tracks can be of concentric or of a spiral design. The system needs to know which track or which part of a track it is using and be able to align reading and writing mechanisms with these tracks. Tracks and/or segments or sectors of tracks can be identified by a code or a sequence of symbols. In many cases the tracking signal and the clock signal that control the symbol detection circuits are derived from the actual data-signal. In those cases it is important that long series of identical symbols and especially long series of 0 symbols are avoided. This can be achieved in the binary case by coding and scrambling mechanisms.
There are a number of known physical and electronic mechanisms to optimize the performance of writing to and reading from storage media such as optical disks.
A widely known method and mechanism to optimize the error performance of storage drives is by coding of data written to the disk. Usually an error correcting coding (ECC) mechanism is used that can correct, to a certain extent, errors that occur during reading of the symbols from the drive medium.    Certain repetitive patterns or long series of identical symbols are undesirable.    Furthermore there is a need for some measure of security that will protect the raw data from being read directly from the storage disk.
In view of the more limited possibilities of the prior art in applying binary technology in scrambling and descrambling and synchronization of multi-valued data, there is a need for a method to perform ternary and multi-valued data scrambling and descrambling.